THE REPRESENTATION OFFICE OF THE CHURCH OF GREECE TO THE EU GAVE ITS FEEDBACK ON THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION'S INITIATIVE CONCERNING "THE NEW EUROPEAN AGENDA FOR CULTURE" AS FOLLOWS:

"We welcome with enthusiasm the various initiatives of the European Institutions and especially of the European Commission based on the Council’s Resolution on A European Agenda for Culture (2007) including the latest Proposal for a Council Recommendation on promoting common values and the initiative for the New European Agenda for Culture by which European culture is recognized and promoted as the most important pillar for a common European identity.

However, we see that despite all the common discussions with representatives of the Churches according to Article 17 of the European Treaty, all initiatives are based on an anthropological paradigm (see article 2 of the European Treaty) according to which the human being just needs to live in a democratically established society and, in it, to be fed, to act rationally and freely and at best to act creatively.

We believe that the current anthropological paradigm needs, of absolute necessity, to be enlarged in order to include not only the three above-mentioned dimensions, but also the dimensions according to which the human being is created for loving his fellow human beings and to relate to his Creator on the basis of his ontological constitution as a complex being.

We are totally convinced that, without an anthropological paradigm containing at least these 5 main anthropological dimensions, we risk adopting legislation that is not for real human beings, but only for fictional beings, with the consequence of European initiatives not being embraced by the vast mass of European citizens.

For the establishment of a new anthropological paradigm as the basis of all European initiatives, the role of Christianity as the main pillar of a common European identity is of ultimate importance. Christianity embraces the above-mentioned five anthropological dimensions of this new anthropological paradigm that Europe needs and it is, compared with other religions and world-views, far more ready to dialogue with other cultures. This guarantees the preponderant role that it is called to play in the third millennium, as Professor MacCulloch recently mentioned in the European Parliament when invited by Mrs McGuinness to present his new book “A History of Christianity: The First 3000 Years”.